INTERNAL REFORMS 43

to see that the cost and the terms were fixed beforehand,
whereby many disputes arose. In after years, a comic
instance occurred during one of the many trips to Europe.
The Maharaja had fallen ill and two nurses—French and
English—were engaged. The French woman proved
unsatisfactory and was dismissed, but as no terms had
been made, she flew into a passion and demanded in
voluble French an extortionate fee. The chronicle
remarks ruefully that 'we ought to have made terms
beforehand', and notes the omission for future guidance.

Want of method never fails to exasperate His Highness,
and a large part of his time has been, and is, devoted to
improving the machinery of his State. He was especially
anxious to inculcate a sense of proportion which seemed
to be lacking. It was not for the Maharaja to attend to
petty details; each had his allotted work, and it was
waste of energy for a higher officer to do the work of
a lower. From the Maharaja and his Government, whose
business it was to initiate and to sanction large schemes,
down to the lowly clerk engaged in preparing bills or
registering papers, each part of the machine should
contribute to the smooth working of the whole. It was
intolerable that petitions should come direct to him or by
backstairs influence; it was disgraceful to the State that
it did not register and treasure up the records of past
experience; and in many other places time and energy
could be saved to the advantage of the State, and not
seldom of its exchequer.

But with all his trenchant criticism, he was willing to
admit that there was much that was good in his State.
Almost as though he felt he had gone too far, and that
his admonitions would only cause despondency, if not
despair, he confesses in half-apologetic strain that his
'reprimands . .. are not due to his conviction that nothing
is right in our method of work', but to an idealistic